It's not too late for Gillard to support gay marriage

On gay marriage, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has dug in behind a stance as unpopular as it is wrong, but she still has time before September to follow the lead taken overseas, writes Jeff Sparrow.

The jubilation across the Tasman as New Zealand authorised same-sex marriage throws into stark contrast the awful mess into which Labor has plunged itself here.

In the past months, we have seen a trickle of support for marriage reform become a torrent. New laws have been passed in 13 countries, including South Africa, Spain, Canada and Norway. Nine US states now permit gay marriage, as does the American capital Washington DC.

Even the president of the USA says that same-sex couples should be able to marry.

So what would have happened if, back in September 2012, Julia Gillard had thrown her weight behind the reform bills then in front of the Parliament; if, instead of permitting MPs a conscience vote, she'd insisted on the customary party discipline.

Let's imagine that, with Greens support, the legislation had passed. In that hypothetical scenario, where would Labor be today?

For a start, Labor activists would be far more motivated for the upcoming election. If Gillard had already delivered them marriage reform, her supporters would be going to the polls feeling they were on the right side of history. Win or lose, they'd be defending a legacy, a historic achievement on an issue that matters a great deal to many.

Instead, rusted-on Laborites have been again thrown on the defensive, disconsolately comparing the measures taken by conservatives in NZ with the inaction by the ALP here.

Many will be asking themselves why they bother.

Along the road to September, Gillard will be quizzed on marriage reform whenever she fronts an audience that contains young people. There's very little she can say in response. In the bad old days, politicians might justify hostility to rights for gays and lesbians through overt appeals to prejudice. Not today.

Consider the speech by NZ National Party MP Maurice Williamson:

All we are doing with this bill is allowing two people who love each other to have that love recognised by way of marriage. ... We are allowing two people who love each other to have that recognised, and I can't see what's wrong with that for love nor money.

With rhetoric like that coming from right-wingers, you can see how difficult defending tradition has become.

Yet, at present, that's predominantly a problem for Gillard, for Abbott has an easy and obvious alibi: he need only say that he shares his position with the Prime Minister. It's exquisitely difficult for Labor to campaign against Abbott's socially conservative views when, on one of the key questions, Gillard and he are as one.

Now let's go back to our hypothetical. For, had the PM spearheaded change last year, the positions would be reversed.

If Labor had already introduced reform, Abbott would now face an unpalatable choice. If he agreed to respect the new reality - that is, to honour the same-sex ceremonies taking place - he'd risk an insurgency from the social conservatives who form a key Liberal constituency, people for whom opposition to gay marriage remains entirely non-negotiable.

But what if he pledged to overturn the law, as many religious activists would undoubtedly demand?

In that case, he'd be promising to dissolve the unions of married couples across the land, a position infinitely more confrontational and unpalatable than simply defending traditional marriage in the abstract. When people like Barry O'Farrell are already speaking out for change, it's hard to believe that Liberals' libertarian wing would sit quietly while Abbott went about breaking up marriages.

Popular support for marriage reform should, in other words, pose a huge opportunity for Gillard and a correspondingly massive problem for Abbott.

Yet, somehow, Labor has made a world of pain for itself.

Of course, there's social conservatives within the ALP too. Presumably, many of the Labor MPs who voted down the bill last year did so because of religious conviction. Furthermore, the intricate skein of factional loyalties within the party probably played a part, since there's a number of notable powerbrokers adamantly opposed to gay marriage.

So had Gillard used her authority to commit Labor to change, she'd have faced a tough fight within her own ranks.

But there's plenty of examples of parliamentary Labor forcing recalcitrant backbenchers or militant unionists to swallow their principles and to back a leadership decision. If Gillard can enforce her Howardesque line on asylum seekers, it's difficult to believe she couldn't push through same-sex marriage.

In New Zealand, change came under a government formed from of an alliance between the National Party and the Christians of United Future. If the membership of conservative parties like that can swallow reform, why not Labor MPs?

Gillard says she's adhering to her own beliefs that marriage should remain the union of a man and a woman. Maybe that's true. Yet as a student politician, Gillard pledged herself to uphold 'homosexual rights' - and it seems distinctly odd that someone in a de facto relationship should defend so passionately a tradition to which they don't actually adhere.

In the parliamentary session in September last year, Gillard and Abbott were joined by Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull in voting against reform. In other words, the status quo received the effective endorsement from the heads of both parties, as well as the most obvious alternative leaders.

One is tempted to conclude that, as recently as last year, political insiders believed same-sex marriage to be electoral poison: a fringe stance that appealed to noisy inner-city voters but that deeply alienated the mainstream, and thus was something no mainstream leader could endorse. Gillard may well have concluded that, by aligning herself with traditional values, she was shoring up support from socially conservative families in outer suburban electorates. But if that was the idea, it's proved - like so many other ALP strategies - too clever by half.

If you're forever chasing polls, you can find doing the right thing difficult, since principled politics sometimes means risking unpopularity. But the announcement that pleased the crowd yesterday can fall suddenly flat today, precisely because public opinion changes and develops.

It's still not too late for Gillard to declare, as President Obama did in May last year, that her views have evolved.

"At a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," said the president.

But there's a passage often attributed to another US president, Alexander Hamilton, that seems more relevant to Labor today. It goes like this: "If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything."

Opposing gay marriage no doubt once seemed the smart position for a pragmatic politician. But look where Gillard has got herself today: dug in behind a stance as unpopular as it is wrong.

Jeff Sparrow is editor of Overland literary journal. View his full profile here.

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